Personal Skills Assessments Help Employers Find, Hire, and Keep the Right Employees

ACT’s new Personal Skills Assessments—Performance, Fit, and Talent—are designed to predict work attitudes and behaviors of job candidates. The assessments, a revolutionary component in the WorkKeys suite of services, offer insight into what makes people successful, said Gary Nolan, director of marketing, ACT Workforce Development Division.

The assessments are intended for both job candidates and current employees. They can be used for prescreening—administered before a candidate is given serious consideration. And they also can be used to determine if a current employee is the best person for a particular job. They work in tandem with the WorkKeys Foundational Skills Assessments, which measure cognitive abilities such as applied mathematics, reading for information, and locating information.

Foundational Skills and Personal Skills are together referred to as the “pyramid of success.”

They:

• Ensure work and training readiness (WorkKeys Foundational Skills)
• Offer the opportunity for employee coaching and development (Talent and Fit)
• Provide employers with an additional source of information for selection (Performance)
• Give a snapshot of strengths and areas needing improvement (Talent)
• Promote career exploration (Fit)

Used together or separately, the Personal Skills Assessments offer a solution-based approach. They help employers select the right people, keep the right people, and invest in the right people. They support prescreening, recruitment, coaching/development, succession/leadership planning, and training/ development.

“The ability to measure personal skills is nothing new,” said Steve Robbins, ACT assistant vice president, Research. “The ability to integrate measures of foundational and personal skills in a single assessment system is new. Companies have long realized that cognitive-based and personality-based skills are strong predictors of an employee’s effectiveness in the workplace. Companies and employees alike now better understand how work attitudes and behaviors play a key role in success.”

Here’s what the Personal Skills Assessments are all about:

Performance Assessment

The Performance Assessment consists of a 55-item questionnaire. It takes 10 to 15 minutes to complete, and can be administered as part of the pre-selection and hiring process. It is intended to help employers narrow the list of candidates for a specific job. Nearly 40 percent of Fortune 100 companies use some form of integrity-based assessment, according to Nolan.

The assessment:

• Evaluates a candidate’s tendency toward counterproductive work behaviors and attitudes toward work.
• Measures general work performance, such as prevalence toward theft and absenteeism, and resilience to work-related stress, as well as unsafe work behaviors, such as accidents, working under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and verbal and physical aggression.

Fit Assessment

The Fit Assessment contains 102 self-report items and takes 15 to 20 minutes to complete. Intended for existing employees and prospects, it can be used in determining which candidates are best suited to the job. This assessment is particularly helpful to employers who want to reorganize their business structure to assess current employees and move them into positions that are a better fit.

The assessment:

• Measures the fit between a person’s work-relevant interests and values and the characteristics of occupations in an organization. The greater the fit, the stronger worker satisfaction and retention.
• Uses the ACT Interest Inventory to assess six basic interests: administration and sales, business operations, technical, science and technology, arts, and social service.
• Uses the ACT Work Values Inventory to analyze 18 values, including public contact, autonomy, influencing others, order, intellectual stimulation, precision, and creativity.

Talent Assessment

The Talent Assessment consists of approximately 165 self-report items and takes 30 to 35 minutes to complete. It is designed to help identify selected employee strengths and weaknesses by measuring personal and workplace achievement. Companies can use it to evaluate individuals who demonstrate strong workplace performance and compare the results with those of other candidates. They can also use the results to develop a talent pool to meet current and future workforce needs.

Low scores on the assessment identify areas that, when improved, may enhance workplace performance.

Through a consulting process, ACT can help companies establish Talent benchmarks that can be used for selection purposes. For example, a company has 75 salespeople, of whom 50 are successful. The Talent Assessment will evaluate all 75 and identify common characteristics, establishing the criteria for success in that particular job.

As an added bonus, Talent Assessment results may help employers develop structured interviews based on a prospect’s scores in specific areas. For example, if an applicant gets a low score in the Order portion of the test—which may suggest a tendency to be disorganized—the interviewer can ask the person to elaborate.

The assessment:

• Predicts employee productivity, leadership, and teamwork, information that can help managers reduce turnover rates, lower training costs, and increase overall company productivity.
• Gauges candidate’s work-related activities and behaviors as they pertain to areas of carefulness, cooperation, creativity, discipline, goodwill, influence, optimism, order, savvy, sociability, stability, and striving.

All three Personal Skills Assessments are delivered on a web-based platform to provide employers and prospects with safe, secure, 24/7 access.